The girls are superheroes. They have superpowers that allow them to physically fight evil characters, but they're also creative, nice, and sweet, respecting their family bonds and relationship with their dad/creator.
Positive Messages
very little
Good vs. evil is the main theme here.
Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that this cute, highly stylized series thrills the senses with its strange characters, funny situations, and lots of lowbrow humor. It's a lot of fun but does focus on the girls' fighting powers -- even if they're sugar-coated with giggles and hearts and high-pitched baby voices. Some of the evil characters are scary to look at, with sharp teeth and claws. Tweens and teens will get more out of the show's goofy gags and tongue-in-cheek dialogue than will young kids, who might take the cartoonish violence at face value.
Super Hero Girls: Cute Show for Elementary Age Kids
Powerful girls is a fairly old show by now, but it was recently introduced to Netflix so it is coming back on the radar of parents and kids alike.
The Powerful Girls are three girls with superpowers who also go to kindergarten. For the most part they are overall helpful to their dad/creator the professor. They call him professor and it shows an adorable father daughter bond.
Since he created the three girls in his lab using sugar, spice, and everything nice, plus some chemical X, the girls have no mother. This isn't dwelt upon heavily however but shows a single parent home in a postive light.
The mayor is a little bitty man with a big white mustash who loves Pickles, his secretary, and is kinda just a bumbling old man. My daughter pointed out that the mayor loves the secretary Mrs Bellum more than his own wife. However she caught this as a tween not a younger child.
Mrs Bellum is a busy, red head with a tiny waist giving her that barbie doll figure in a little red dress.
The power Puff girls fight "bad guys basically in trails of glowing colors (green, blue, and pink.) There is slap stick violence but not real or scary violence. The villains are portrayed as more like plush toy bad guys than actual creepy villians. Of all the villians featured in this show there are two that are slightly questionable. HIM is suposed to look like Satan in a pink tutu and pink wig. He talks in a feminine voice as well. He may be the trans character or simply just Devil like bad guy.
The next questionable one is a spin on Medusa demo mythology. This is a villain called Seduca, and appropriately named because she toys to seduce the professor in one episode and almost marries him before the girls stop it. The name is what I find inappropriate for younger audiences.
It does have good values like family is important, friends are important, stealing is wrong, it is wrong to be rude to people (in the epolisode of talking dog).
What's the Story?
Blossom (voiced by Cathy Cavadini), Bubbles (Tara Strong), and Buttercup (Elizabeth Daily) were brought into the world quite by accident when klutzy Professor Utonium (Tom Kane) spilled a bottle of Chemical X into a formula that was intended to make "little girls." After the accident, sugar and spice and everything nice morphed into three fighting dynamos called THE POWERPUFF GIRLS, whose goal is to "save the world before bedtime."
Sure, they're cute, and the animation is nicely stylized, but this is still your standard superhero setup. Some might say that The Powerpuff Girls is meant to empower little girls -- to give them their own action heroes -- while others might see the frenetic fighting as over-the-top and not a great influence. Checking in with your younger kids about how they feel after watching a scary or brutal episode might be a way to gauge whether this show is appropriate for them. But tweens and teens will get a kick out of the bubbly, butt-kicking trio and their adventures.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the show's violence. Why do all the girls' problems need to be solved via mayhem and destruction? Is it the villains' fault, or could the girls resolve their conflicts in other ways? Do you think viewers are meant to take the violence seriously, or is it all "good cartoon fun"? Can the littlest viewers understand the distinction?
Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by
suggesting a diversity update.
Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.
By Joly Herman
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
